“Your servant, sweet lady.” Lord Godfrey placed a slow, emphatic kiss on Nest’s cold hand, leaving a moist print. He looked at her, raising his eyebrows. “Or should I say — your prisoner?”
“P-prisoner?” Nest attempted to smile, and surreptitiously rubbed the wet mark against her skirt. Beside her Angharad beamed sentimental delight, for Godfrey was very handsome. He was tall, dark-haired, with blue eyes, a fresh, rosy colour, and full red lips. He made Nest feel plain and small and insignificant, even though she was wearing her new gooseberry-green gown, and her best necklace of crystal and coral beads.
“Of course — for have you not captured my heart? But I am happy to be the prisoner of so fair a jailor.” Godfrey fanned away a yawn with long, white fingers, and a blush burned up into Nest’s face. Prisoners? Jailors? He didn’t mean a word of it. This was fashionable nonsense, the way they talked at court. Nest had never flirted, she couldn’t chatter, she didn’t know how to make the proper witty response. She felt miserably inadequate.
“But since I am at your mercy,” Godfrey elaborated, “I hope you will not be cruel?” He arched an eyebrow, adding an exasperated glance that seemed to say, Oh come on — play the game!
Nest twisted her fingers in desperation. What could she say? Have you ridden jar today? It was dull, but possible. She rehearsed it: Have you ridden jar? It wasn’t very interesting, and she already knew the answer. All the same…
“H-have you ridden far today?” she quavered.
He replied promptly, “I never noticed. I whiled away the miles in a delightful dream — thinking of you!”
“Oh,” said Nest faintly.
Another dreadful silence fell between them. Nest hunted for something — anything — to say. Her mind presented her with a clean white blank, like unwritten paper. Why couldn’t someone help? Why didn’t Angharad say something, when for once Nest would have been glad to have her launch into one of her long speeches?
“Have — have you ridden far today?” she asked hopelessly — and knew from his incredulous face that she’d already said it. He would think she was an idiot! She wanted to die. Time had stopped. She would be frozen in this moment forever…
The Hall door opened with a gust that fluttered the tablecloths. In marched a tall, stern-looking priest with a ring of steel-grey hair and fierce black eyebrows. Rollo followed him, and the door clapped shut with a bang that delivered Nest from her agony.
“Who is that priest?” she was able to ask.
“My new chaplain. I’ll bring him to meet you.” Godfrey strode away in obvious relief.
As if a spell had ended, everything began to move and change and happen. Angharad clasped ecstatic hands. “Oh, my lucky little lamb, what a lovely man your father has chosen for you!”
“Well, Nest?” Her father appeared by her side. “Now that he’s here at last, do you like him?”
“Ah, my lord,” Angharad cried before Nest could get a word in, “I’m sure she’s tumbling into love with him already, although she’s far too shy to say so. So tall, so handsome, so attentive! The journey seemed short, he said to her, for I was dreaming of you. Oh!”
“Is it so?” Hugo smiled at Nest.
“He said something like that,” she muttered, hot-cheeked. “But he didn’t—”
“Hush! He’s coming back!” Angharad clutched Nest’s arm.
Godfrey reappeared with the priest, a tall man in his fifties with an ascetic, bad-tempered face. Before anyone could greet him he broke out in a harsh, complaining voice, “My lord, your elf-child has bitten me!”
They stared at him, astonished. He thrust out his hand for Hugo to see. “Blood, look! And this man of yours —” he gestured to Rollo, who stood back with arms folded “— has spoken to me with insolence. I demand that you punish them both!” He spoke with the confidence of a man accustomed to inspiring fear in everyone he meets. Hugo’s face went cold.
“Who are you to make demands of me, fellow?”
The priest seemed shaken. He took a step back and looked sulkily at Lord Godfrey.
“This is Sir Thomas, my chaplain,” Godfrey explained.
“Is it?” Hugo said with indifference. “Well, Thomas, the elf-girl shouldn’t have been anywhere near you. I thought I told Wolf to put her away.”
“That boy?” The priest turned, pointing dramatically: and there was Wolf, standing near the door with Halewyn. His colour was high and his eyes were angry: he lifted his chin with a hard defiance that Nest had never seen in him before.
“That boy is a liar and a runaway, and not to be relied upon. Did you know that he had escaped from Wenford Abbey, where he used to be under my charge? He should be whipped and sent back.”
So this arrogant, intense, thin-lipped man was Wolf’s old master! No wonder Wolf had run away. Nest tried to catch his eye, to signal shock and sympathy, but he wasn’t looking. He was staring at Thomas with something close to hatred.
Hugo shrugged. “You should bathe that hand. Angharad, send for a basin of hot water. And let us sit down to our meal.” He looked around, frowning. “Where is Howell? Not here? Then, Sir Thomas, perhaps you will be good enough to say grace?”
Nest was longing to exchange a word with Wolf, but he kept his distance and avoided meeting her eye. Soon she was sitting stiffly between her father and Lord Godfrey, and Wolf was yards away on one of the lower tables. The first course was served: a white soup of minced chicken and almonds. Whenever Nest looked at Wolf, he was talking rapidly to Halewyn, his elbows on the table, his head low. She could guess what it was about. Every so often, one of them would fling a quick glance at Brother Thomas on the High Table.
Nest felt forlorn. She shrank into herself, trying not to let her elbow touch Lord Godfrey’s, and pushed her spoon drearily through the creamy soup. Lord Godfrey drank a lot of wine and talked across her to her father, in a louder and much more natural voice than he had used before. “The elf-girl, Hugo — I should like to see her. Why don’t you have her brought in to amuse us?”
“She is not very amusing,” said Hugo briefly.
Godfrey bit into a sweet pastry. “How did you find her? What’s the story?”
“I came across her while I was out hunting wolves.”
“It is all very marvellous,” Godfrey said, spraying crumbs, “but what makes you keep the creature, if not for entertainment? Especially if she bites?”
“Because—” Hugo fell silent, and Nest saw his fingers whiten around his cup. She looked up, startled —surely he wasn’t going to tell the real reason? — and caught him staring into space with a tormented frown. Lord Godfrey and Brother Thomas exchanged glances. Then Hugo blinked and said quietly, “To see if she can be taught to speak.”
Godfrey laughed — too loudly. “What, is she dumb? I’ll lend you Sir Thomas. He must have beaten Latin into dozens of youngsters at the abbey. He’ll have her singing psalms in a week or two.” He folded his hands together in mock prayer. “Oh Lord, open my lips! Eh, Thomas?”
Brother Thomas leaned from the end of the table. “I scarcely think that the words of the psalms are fit for the mouth of an elf-child. Still, it’s possible I could make her talk.”
Hugo looked at him. “How?” He sounded sceptical, but Brother Thomas was not to be deterred. He fitted his fingertips precisely together. “As you would expect of a man in my position, I have read many books. Although everyone agrees that elves are stubborn and deceitful, I know of ways in which they can be tricked or shocked into speech.”
As Brother Thomas’s loud arrogant voice carried across the Hall, Nest saw Wolf raise his head. Their eyes met, their lips twitched in shared anticipation. Here it came again — the porridge and the eggshell!
“Red-hot iron should do it,” went on Brother Thomas. “Heat a poker or a horse-shoe, and brand the elf-child with it.”
Nest clutched the edge of the table. “How can you say such a cruel thing?”
“Cruel?” Brother Thomas drew his dark eyebrows into a frown. “Madam, you are a very young lady.” And therefore ignorant, his tone seemed to say. “Perhaps you do not understand the nature of elves. They deserve no mercy. They are the accursed remnant of the angels who fell with Lucifer, for whom God Himself has decreed punishment. To deal with such spirits, one must be as harsh and merciless as they are. In any case, they do not have real bodies. The shapes they take are mere illusions.”
“Now that must be true!” Halewyn called out from the lower table. “The elf-girl gave you an illusionary bite, with illusionary teeth, didn’t she?”
A titter of laughter followed this remark. Brother Thomas went pale with anger. “The elf-child is corporeal, that is to say she has a physical body, not a spiritual one. Probably she is not entirely a demon, but the offspring of a demon and a mortal.”
Godfrey’s munching jaws slowed. “Is that possible?”
“Certainly, my lord. God allows demons to put on mortal shapes, though there is always some flaw, some mark by which they can be recognised — hooves, or horns — that red stain on your elf-child’s face. Between the moon and the Earth live false spirits called incubus and succubus, which roam about tempting women and men into sin. The sorcerer Merlin was the child of a woman and an incubus. Saints without number have been tempted by succubi, in the form of seductive women.”
“Have they really?” Godfrey drawled. “I didn’t know saints had so much fun.”
Nest glanced at her father. His expression was grim. She was suddenly sorry for him, having to listen to all this about elves and devils, when he thought her mother was in such danger… She plucked his sleeve. “Father, let’s not talk of devils on Christmas Eve!”
He turned to her in surprised relief. “You’re right, Agnes!” He clapped his hands. “This is sad stuff. Halewyn — entertain us. Sing something, or tell us a tale.”
Halewyn eeled his way backwards off the bench, tall and thin and extravagant in his bright red and blue clothing. He picked up his harp, but instead of striking the strings he wandered towards the High Table holding it loosely in one hand, his pale face alert. Everyone watched, expecting some foolery. He leaned his head close to Brother Thomas. “Have you ever been tempted by a succubus?”
Nest was furious. She wanted Halewyn to distract attention from the priest, not concentrate on him. Brother Thomas stared rigidly ahead, obviously hoping Halewyn would move on. But Halewyn hadn’t finished.
“But of course not, Sir Thomas. The Devil isn’t stupid. Do you think he would tempt you with beautiful women, or gold and jewels — things you can easily refuse, because you don’t want them? No. Temptation should be… tempting. That’s the whole point, really.” He added lightly, “And you know, sir, I’m so ignorant, I’ve always thought that men ought to have a little fellow feeling for devils. They’re not so different from us. Out of all Creation, only men and devils know how to be truly wicked. Isn’t that so?”
Two bright spots glowed on Brother Thomas’s cheekbones. He stretched sarcastic lips in a mirthless smile. “The fool thinks he is a philosopher!”
“I’m a fool-osopher!” cried Halewyn, with a caper. “But I think my fool-osophy is worth more than your wisdom!”
As a scatter of applause greeted the pun, he spun away and bowed to Lord Hugo.
“Now my lord,” he said gaily, “At this time of the year it’s customary to have a night of foolery, when ‘the mighty are put down from their seat and the humble are exalted’. And as the best fool among you, I hereby appoint myself your Lord of Misrule! Here is my crown!” He whipped a paper crown out of his pocket and set it crookedly over one donkey ear. To shouts of encouragement, he drew himself up on tiptoe like a crowing cockerel. “Will you take me for your Pharoah of Folly and Master of Mischief?”
“Very well,” said Hugo, laughing. “Give us your first command!”
Halewyn’s smile was wicked. “Out of your seat, then, Hugo — it’s mine now!”
Nest’s hand flew to her mouth. Rollo, who had been serving Hugo’s wine, leaned from behind with a mutter of warning. But Hugo seemed bent on entering into the spirit of the thing. He stood up easily, and Halewyn flung himself down in Hugo’s great chair.
Hugo made an elaborate bow. “And now, King of Comedy? What is your will? How shall we proceed?”
Halewyn cocked an eyebrow. “Hugo, you have written a song or two in your time —” Nest gasped at this effrontery “— but since All Hallows’ Eve until now, I have not once heard you sing. And they say you are worth hearing!” He watched Hugo’s face change. “Since our positions are now reversed, you shall entertain us.” He held out the harp.
The talk in the Hall faded and hushed. For an unbreathing moment, Hugo stared at the harp. Nest sat up, every nerve-ending prickling. He won’t! He can’t! Surely he wouldn’t let Halewyn get away with this? After all, the reversal of roles was only a joke. Her father was still lord: he could do what he liked! She waited for him angrily to order Halewyn out of his sight.
“You know you want to,” added Halewyn softly.
Hugo slowly stretched out a hand and took the harp. He sat on the edge of the dais and set it against his shoulder. Tentatively he plucked one string, and the note struck the silence like a drop of silver water.
Halewyn leaned forward, resting his chin on his fist. “I have sung plenty of your songs, Hugo. Let me see if you can remember one of mine. It’s maybe a year or two since you heard it, but a good tale lives in the memory. A tale of love —” he looked from Hugo to Godfrey and Nest, and dark laughter flashed in his eyes “— a tale of woe. The story of good King Orfeo!”
Rollo sucked in a hissing breath. Hugo bowed his golden head. Like a man in a dream he sat plucking idle notes, and the hush stretched until Nest’s nerves were as tight as the harp strings, and she could hear Argos’ teeth rattle and knock on the bone he was chewing beneath the table.
“There was a king and there was his queen,” Hugo began at last, half singing, half chanting in a quiet, clear voice, “and their names were King Orfeo and…”
“Queen Herodys,” said Halewyn softly.
Hugo nodded to him over the top of the harp. “Now King Orfeo was the best harper of his day. Whenever he played, the birds would cease to sing, the waters cease to run, the very clouds wandering over the blue sky would pause to listen to him. And King Orfeo loved Queen Herodys and she loved him, and so they were happy, happy, happy.” The harp strings sobbed.
“But as nothing mortal lasts forever, so one day King Orfeo went out hunting. And Queen Herodys went with her ladies into an orchard. And in the hottest part of the day when the sun stood at noon and the shadows under the apple trees were very deep, and the grasshoppers ticked away the moments, the lord of Elfland came riding by with all his company. And saw Queen Herodys half-asleep in the shade, and struck her to the heart with his cruel dart, so that she vanished away. And nothing was left to show where she had been but a great grey stone.”
A great, grey stone.
Sorrow took Nest by surprise, splashing right over her. It was true. This was what death did. Took away the person you loved and left you with a stone. Her nose prickled, her eyes filled. Oh, Mam! You died so long ago, and still I miss you!
Hugo plucked a handful of soft, lamenting notes. “When King Orfeo came home and found everyone in his house weeping and crying, he swore he would never rest until he found his lady. And they begged him not to try, ‘for the lord of the underworld has your lady now, and no man can go there.’
“And King Orfeo said, ‘Yet I will go.’
“And they told him, ‘Each step you take into the underworld will be a year from your life.’”
Nest shivered. This was true too: you could lose years of your life in grief. Did her father understand what he was singing? Didn’t he see that the tale was telling him what would happen if you tried to follow someone who’d died?
“But King Orfeo said, ‘What do I care for the years of my life if I live them without my love?’ And he went into the orchard where the elf-lord had struck his lady, and he played his harp until the grey stone itself cracked in two for pure grief. And the way opened into the underworld.”
Hugo’s fingers flickered in a series of notes that sounded like hasty footsteps descending in a spiral, going down and down. “And King Orfeo went into the underworld to look for his Queen. And each step he took was a year from his life, but on he went.”
The music went slow and quiet.
“Now deep under the hill he found a green meadow, lit by a light as though the sun had not quite risen, or had just set. And through the meadow a river flowed, and the colour of that river was dark red.” Hugo’s voice was suddenly harsh. “For all the blood that’s shed on Earth runs through the rivers of Elfland!”
Was that in the story? Or was it something her father had just added? Nest remembered Wolf’s vision of a slow rust-red river, looping through a green country in the deep mines under Devil’s Edge.
“And King Orfeo found a castle on the river bank, as fine as the walls of Paradise. And in the castle was a splendid hall, and in that hall the lord of the underworld sat on a high seat. And beside him sat Queen Herodys, pale and still. And all through that hall ran a whispering and a groaning and a weeping.
“Then the lord of the underworld said to King Orfeo, ‘Who are you?’
“And King Orfeo said, ‘I am nothing but a poor minstrel, who must make my living by playing in many a lord’s hall.’ And he began to play such blissful music that everyone in the hall thought they were in Paradise.”
Now Hugo bent low over the harp and began singing to himself as if no one was there: so quietly that Nest could hardly hear. She strained her ears. It was a song about a lady riding through a meadow. “Her petticoat was of linen, of silk was her dress. Her slippers were made of mayflowers, her feet to caress.” He sang in a low, crooning voice that raised the hairs on the nape of her neck. And when he had finished…
“When he had finished, the lord of Elfland said, ‘By my head, your payment shall be whatever you ask, for we have never heard such music before.’
“Then King Orfeo said, ‘King of Shadows, give me the lady who sits beside you.’”
Nest leaned forward, as tense as if it was all really happening, so intent on her father that she was only dimly annoyed by Lord Godfrey fidgeting, tapping his foot, twiddling a spoon and catching it.
What would happen? How would it end?
“‘By my head,’ said the lord of Elfland, ‘I wish you had asked for anything else. But the lady is yours, for it would be a black shame on me to break my promise.’
“So, joyfully, King Orfeo took his Queen by her hand and led her away out of the hall and the castle and across the green meadow and up the path that led to the light. And they returned to their own castle and their own lands, and lived long and happy.
“And if they have not died… they are living there still.”
Hugo swept his hand over the strings in a sudden discord and bent his head. Lord Godfrey dropped the spoon with a muffled clatter. With a shifting, stirring, cautious murmur, everyone in the Hall wiped tears from their faces. The murmur swelled into muted applause.
Nest’s head throbbed. She pressed her fingers to her temples.
Is that how it ends?
Halewyn turned his head as if he had heard her thoughts. His eyes were narrow and bright as a sleepy cat’s. Nest shook her head in distress.
That can’t be how it ends!
She’d never heard the story before, but she knew in her bones that something was wrong. It so, so obviously should have ended sadly.